Saturday, September 12, 2009

Cute Response

A couple people in yesterday's comments noticed that Kaspar was slowly changing- evolving or devolving, depending on how you look at it.I think change can be good and bad, depending on what changes. Old characters, like Bugs Bunny changed all the time.He changed for the good for a few years, and then kind of devolved into becoming an inactive logo.I think you should let things change naturally, as you add shades to your characters, but it's god to go back every once in awhile and check to see if the core has changed too much-what made the character appealing and unique in the first place.So I went back and looked at my presentation drawings and ate a bunch of bacon (which helps me think) as I drew the original things I noticed that had changed. His arms had gotten longer, and his face bigger, and his ears gravitated to the middle of his head. I don't think those elements are essential to the core of Kaspar, but it's fun to try different things. If you purposely try not to ever change anything, then the characters quickly become flat and stale.

I believe in drawing by feel, rather than slavishly following model sheets. When you are working with another person's characters though, you should be very analytic of the drawings he or she gives you and get it accurate for awhile, until you yourself understand the core, and then you can start letting your own feel and style peep through to help shade the personalities and design. Well, if the director lets you, that is.

19 comments:

Love seeing these rough doodles. I really like the bigger look of Kaspar more than the one in the previous post. Both look good but there is something about this one that just makes me want to find out more about him.

The boorish Kaspar is exciting. You have a history of creating bears with split personalities, or at least ones that have an episode.Like another person commented, he was starting to resemble the Tasmanian Devil. I think it had something to do with the lower jaw, and the protruding snaggle tooth.

The newer, meaner looking Kaspar is better, I think. I mean...the old version is a bit disarming at first glance, which is good if you want to stun your audience more. But I like the one in yesterday's doodles.

These are really cool, and I love the original color pitch. But where's the parasite inside the rangers? He was really cool. And Goodie 3 Shoes is great. I wish this would get on TV, or how about DTV DVDs? Thanks for sharing these, and thanks for this generous and invaluable blog.

Have you thought about doing your variety show idea as a comic, if the animated route isn't forthcoming? All of the characters on your pitch blog, plus your George Liquor stories posted in the past few months, demand stories. Could you go back to the old Spumco comic idea - surely a publisher like Drawn and Quarterly or Fantagraphics would publish any of your work? I'd love to see a modern equivalent of Harvey Comics with each title devoted to a couple of your characters.

There are a lot of first timers out there who are just starting to work in typical animation jobs. It would be nice if you could dedicate a post to what we should expect to encounter.

We all know how swell it would be to work for Spumco, and that you do make cartoons the way they ought to be made, but what if you read this blog all the time and then get a job working as a storyboard revisionist on Dora The Explorer.

I dunno, maybe a post telling people what to expect as opposed to how things should be? Just a thought.

Just for the record; I posted " drawings are evolving, but the bear is devolving" as pretty much a turn of phrase. The drawings just seemed a bit more developed and denser than the previous ones, and the bear's behavior more brutish. There wasn't any criticism, implicit or otherwise.

A bear fun fact, that I just saw on tv; bears steal squirrels nuts (and acorns). The squirrels are noisy when they're hiding them, so the bears figure out where they are.

Hey Mr. Krick how are you? hope everything is cool, just wanted to tell you that we are fans of your work and we consider you one of the great Masters of animation these days , So we wanted to make you know that we just finished our first graduation short film, our animation team It’s called "VURUP" we come from ARGENTINA, MEXICO AND COLOMBIA , it would definitely be an honor for us just to have your thoughts or opinions about it ,Hope You really Enjoy "INSERT COIN".

VURuP website www.vurup.com We are also on cartoonbrew http://www.cartoonbrew.com/shorts/insert-coin-by-vurup.html